‘The child has not an idea of anything of the kind,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering. ‘Why should I disturb her unconsciousness?’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Eldridge, ironically, ‘I am sure I beg your pardon. I don’t, for my part, understand the unconsciousness of a girl of nineteen!’
‘Not quite nineteen,’ said Ombra’s mother, with a certain humility.
‘A girl old enough to be married,’ said the other, vehemently. ‘I was married myself at eighteen and a half. I don’t understand it, and I don’t approve of it. If she doesn’t know, she ought to know; and unless she means to accept him, I shall always say she has treated him very badly. I would speak to her, if it were I, before another day had passed.’
Mrs. Anderson was an impressionable woman, and though she resented her neighbour’s interference, she acted upon her advice. She took Ombra into her arms that evening, when they were alone, in the favourite hour of talk which they enjoyed after Kate had gone to bed.
‘My darling!’ she said, ‘I want to speak to you. Mr. Sugden has taken to coming very often—we are never free of him. Perhaps it would be better not to let him come quite so much.’
‘I don’t see how we can help it,’ said Ombra, calmly; ‘he is dull, he likes it; and I am sure he is very inoffensive. I do not mind him at all, for my part.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs. Anderson, faltering; ‘but then, perhaps, he may mind you.’
‘In that case he would stop away,’ said Ombra, with perfect unconcern.
‘You don’t understand me, dear. Perhaps he thinks of you too much; perhaps he is coming too often, for his own good.’